


Possibilities Deferred

by Meltha



Category: The Odyssey - Homer
Genre: F/M, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-09
Updated: 2011-11-09
Packaged: 2017-10-25 21:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meltha/pseuds/Meltha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Athena looks at Odysseus and ponders what will never happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Possibilities Deferred

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xiuxi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xiuxi/gifts).



> Disclaimer: If Homer would like to come back and sue me, I would be very honored to pay him in goats or amphorae or something.
> 
> Written for Xiuxi for Yuletide 2008

Few things are more attractive to a woman of intelligence than a man of intelligence. Odysseus most certainly qualified as intelligent, Athena thought. Goddesses do reserve certain priviliges, such as the ability to become invisible and perch lightly upon the mast of a ship and listen to the talk of the soldiers on their way to war. She wasn't fond of human sacrifice, and the fate of Iphigenia was distasteful to her, but she would be lying if she denied she found Odysseus an extremely attractive individual and was growing fond of him

Fond: it was a boring, tepid word, but as the embodiment of virginity, modesty, and chastity, Athena could not afford to be more fervid in her feelings. Granted, she thought of some of the shenanigans of Artemis and her lover Endymion, and how precisely she managed to maintain the title of virgin goddess after that fiasco was still rather a mystery to her, but there were other problems as well.

For all his faults, and Athena was prepared to admit there were many, Odysseus loved his Penelope; granted, Circe had shown that he did not love her to the exclusion of all other women, but Athena had seen enough of scorned women to know that dalliances often brought penalties that far out-weighed their pleasures. She had even attempted pushing Penelope towards thoughts of other men, but she proved remarkably stalwart and loyal. Athena couldn't help having some respect for that. It was a refreshing change from the winds of constant betrayal that blew on Olympus. Also, Penelope's flat refusal to choose a new lover annoyed Aphrodite, and anything that annoyed that little trollop incited Athena's everlasting admiration, especially after that humiliating affair with Paris and the apple.

Odysseus had won and was travelling homeward, as he had been for so many years. She wondered if the eye he sometimes cast towards the mast during the worst fits of tempest ever discerned the shape of a woman pressed against the sails. She watched him because she enjoyed eavesdropping on his riddles and quick-witted plans that were so different from the often plodding intelligence of her own father and his friends. And yes, he was handsome, not in the foppish way that Paris had tried to be or in the completely brutal manner of Ares, who lacked any subtlety at all (oh, he and Aphrodite truly were made for one another), but in the manner of a quick-eyed hawk.

No, Athena told herself, meddling in the affairs of humans had led her into trouble far too often before, and while wily Odysseus might be a truly lovely specimen of some of the best things humans had to offer, her own intellect told her that if she followed the path of Eros in this, no good would come of it. Still, she let herself dream, for that at least was without peril, and if perhaps she asked the wind to halt its breath or blow in random and wayward paths so that his homecoming was interminably delayed, well, she was a goddess, after all, and that was her perogative. She would lead him home eventually, of course, but for now, she was content to watch her unknowing votary at the helm of his boat, his hair dampened by sea spray and his sun burned skin glistening in the daylight as his brain hatched yet another cunning trick to outwit any foe in his path.

Athena shook her head and sighed at her own folly, but, she reasoned, if one cannot indulge folly on occasion, then what is the benefit of eternal youth and beauty?


End file.
